You’re busy, I get it. But if you’ve been too preoccupied to find time to buy the influential action role-playing game Fallout: New Vegas in the 13 years since its release, Epic Games brings good news: you can now download it for free.
As of this morning, the Ultimate Edition of the post-apocalyptic game (formerly $20) got stickered with a 100-percent-off discount as part of the Epic store’s weekly rotation of free games and giveaways. To download it to your PC, all you have to do is either click “get” or add to your cart any time between now and June 1 at 10 a.m. ET, when the offer expires.
In Fallout: New Vegas, the U.S. is a burnt, neon wasteland populated by selfish and aggressive groups across the Mojave Wasteland, once known as California, Arizona, and Nevada. In a 2010 Kotaku review, Senior Editor Luke Plunkett wrote that New Vegas “is a role-playing game that you can really sink your teeth into. If you’ve got the time—and more importantly, the patience—to overlook the game’s technical ‘characteristics.’”
But the game’s notorious launch day bugs have been mostly squashed in the last decade. The Ultimate Edition released in 2012 and brought some improvements and expansions, including story add-ons (“Dead Money,” “Honest Hearts,” “Old World Blues,” and “Lonesome Road”) and extra item packs (Courier’s Stash, Gun Runners Arsenal).
“Whether you’re a seasoned explorer of the Mojave or playing the game for the first time, you’ll find there are more friends and enemies to make, more consequences to your actions and more opportunities to live in glory or infamy throughout the Wasteland,” the Epic Games description of the Ultimate Edition says. “The choices you make will be as crucial to your survival as ever.”
I say you choose to download a free game that, despite its flaws, people have spent years loving desperately. After Epic Games’ New Vegas offer expires, it will reveal the “mystery game” set to take its place. You better hurry up and take advantage of its current offer before you get stuck with Nancy Drew for Windows 7.